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Tony Kanaan's car crashed into the tire barrier after on-track contact on Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Photo by LAT PHOTOGRAPHIC

Things spun out of control for the Izod IndyCar Series at the end of Sunday's race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Dario Franchitti crashed as the leader mid-race, and that was the calmest of the moments.

The race ended with Will Power throwing a double-fingered salute to race officials for allowing a green-flag start when the track was wet. A half-dozen cars spun out of control, collecting Power.

Oriol Servia was almost as mad. He thought he won the race when it went green because he passed leader Ryan Hunter-Reay. Scott Dixon passed Hunter-Reay, too, but chief steward Brian Barnhart ruled that the finishing order would revert back to before the restart because he said the conditions weren't fair.

"It's only the right thing to do," Barnhart said. "We tore up some race cars we shouldn't have."

That gave Power the fifth spot back, but he knows he'll be in trouble for flipping off the officials in a shot caught by national television and made an Internet sensation.

"I know I lost my temper but I couldn't help it, I was so emotional," he said. "We were begging them, I was begging them, don't throw the green, it's too slippery--everyone was saying it."

Franchitti's demise came on lap 119. Approaching the green flag, he had contact with Takuma Sato that spun the Scot into the inside wall. His race was over, ending a streak of 43 consecutive races finished.

Franchitti, the pole sitter, settled for 20th place when a win appeared in hand.

"He [Sato] kept coming and I don't know what he was going to do," Franchitti said. "He had a very clear view of where I was and he kept coming up."

Sato took responsibility.

"It was my fault," he said. "I had debris in my eye, tears."

Hunter-Reay scored his first oval-track win since the Champ Car World Series race in 2004 at Milwaukee. He drove for the Herdez Competition team at the time. This was his first IndyCar win on such a track.

Servia finished second with Dixon third and rookie James Hinchcliffe fourth.

Franchitti entered the event 62 points ahead of Power, and it was as high as 98 points before the Scot had his trouble. But the combination of finishes left Power only 47 points behind heading to the Aug. 28 race at Infineon Raceway. Five races remain.

The race was one of the most tumultuous of the season, with nearly as much contact as the street fight in Toronto last month. There were three multicar accidents and fire onboard Alex Tagliani's car.

Graham Rahal predicted what was coming after nearly crashing in qualifying. He had the fastest car in a couple of the practice sessions and was expected to contend for the pole, but his Ganassi Racing car wiggled in turn three, and he was lucky to save it.

Starting 23rd in a pack of 26 cars is never ideal, and it wasn't for Rahal this time, either. When Mike Conway spun coming off the second corner, Rahal listened to his spotter and dove to the inside. Rahal got all the way to the grass but Conway's backward-sliding car kept coming and they hit hard. The impact stuffed Rahal into the inside tire barrier, where his race ended.

"We were hopeless," he said of the situation with Conway, who started 12th. "My spotter said go low, go low, and there was nowhere to go."

The frustration was clear. "We dominated this weekend," he said.

Both cars were knocked out of the race.

Helio Castroneves, who was making his 200th start with Team Penske since 2000, spun in the same part of the track as Conway. Castroneves didn't collect anyone, although rookie Charlie Kimball barely escaped without contact.

Castroneves was able to continue albeit a few laps down, but it was just another moment in a difficult day. He struck tools dropped on the track by another car during the prerace morning warm-up, damaging the radiator in his right sidepod. The crew repaired it just behind the pit wall as a crowd gathered to watch.

After a 33-lap caution for light rain, Franchitti jumped ahead of Sato for a slight edge. Behind them, a crash was developing.

Three cars got side-by-side in turn two: Tony Kanaan on the bottom with Marco Andretti in the middle and Tomas Scheckter on the outside. They simply ran out of room, making contact that had Kanaan and Scheckter getting the worst of it.

Kanaan's car hit the barrier and flipped upside down.

"You've got to ask Marco and Tomas what the hell they were thinking," Kanaan said.

Rookie J. R. Hildebrand was collected in Franchitti's incident after he was clipped by E. J. Viso.

The final caution, which led to a red flag, included more than Danica Patrick and Power. Sato and Ed Carpenter were collected. But in the final box score, it's like the crash never happened.